Rusalka at the Gran Teatre del Liceu: Beware of Tales

Italian contemporary composer Salvatore Sciarrino, born in 1947, defined his monodrama Lohengrin as "azione invisibile per solista, strumenti e voci". He expected his work to be an invisible action so to say not to be staged and only presented by a small orchestra dominated by winds, a soprano and three male singers. The new installation of this work by the Salzburg Easter Festival is enriched as a Prelude by two other compositions of Salvatore Sciarrino. La Spazia Inversa,...

Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel, which premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2016, is based on Luis Buñuel’s classic 1962 Surrealist film. In it a group of bourgeois guests dine at the house of Edmundo, Marqués de Nobile, and his wife Lucia, only to discover that at the end of the evening that they are unable to leave the house. An undefined force is holding them in one room, and as the days wear on the people stuck there grow increasingly bestial as...

March 19th 1967 is the birthday of the Salzburg Easter Festival, a creation of classical superstar Herbert von Karajan in his search of optimized conditions for the performing arts. Walkuere and the Ring der Nibelungen were his first projects to be realized together with the Berlin Philharmonic and a world class cast. Since then, the Easter Festival has gained a top position in the international festival calendar and a reputation for outstanding production for a small and exclusive circle...

Claus Guth created this production of Strauss/Hofmannsthal’s The Woman without Shadow (Die Frau ohne Schatten) 2013 for La Scala. After later shown at Covent Garden, London it is now being staged at the Berlin State Opera as part of the Easter Festival 2017, scenic rehearsal by Julia Burbach. Contrary to other concepts with directors elevating the over-mystified, ferry-tale like plot into full abstraction (Loy for Salzburg or Ponnelle for Cologne many years ago), Guth and...

A dramatic conception that was complex to decipher and perhaps even polemic, a surprising and spectacular visual coldness and a totally convincing musical resolution were the three main axis of the performance of Rigoletto presented by Liceu. It is difficult to dramatically face the great titles of the repertoire because it is a matter of finding the right balance between redundancy and extravagance, two extremes that are both artistically sterile. In this production of the Verdian...

George Frideric Handel’s twenty year long domination of London opera began in 1720 with Radamisto, meaning that Partenope, which appeared in 1730, was at the midpoint of this golden period. The opera was extremely well received on its premiere, but it is about as far removed from opera seria as any of the composer’s works, and presents a challenge to any director who wishes to make sense of such a far-fetched story. English National Opera, however, has long been known as...